


President Joe Biden's decision to provide Ukraine with the controversial cluster munitions led to disagreements on Capitol Hill.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch (R-ID), and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker (R-MS) released a joint statement in support of Biden's new decision, which they said was "long overdue," and pushed him to provide other military aid that he's declined to give them so far.
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“While no weapons system is a proverbial golden bullet, DPICMs will help fill a key gap for Ukraine’s military and will allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to target and eliminate Russian forces more efficiently, including in fortified positions on the battlefield," they said. "But the Biden Administration cannot stop here. It is critical they also send [Army Tactical Missile System] ATACMS, which have a similar range to the Storm Shadow cruise missile the United Kingdom has already sent, and they must expedite the delivery of F-16s."
The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would provide this munition, which is banned by more than 100 countries globally due to the risks they pose to civilians, for the first time in the war in Ukraine. Administration and defense officials cited Russia's use of these weapons already in Ukraine as part of the reason for the change.
These munitions are canisters that contain tens to hundreds of smaller bomblets, and the outer shell breaks apart at a certain point during deployment so the bomblets disperse over an area larger than four football fields, and some of those don't explode as expected, leaving civilians at risk for years.
The administration has refused to provide Ukraine with weapons that would enable them to strike within Russian territory, though there have also been other weapons, such as tanks and the Patriot missile defense system, which Biden initially said no to providing only to later reverse that decision.
"This administration’s misguided fear of escalation in providing critical weapon systems — from Stingers to HIMARS to Abrams tanks and now to DPICMs — has only served to prolong the war, embolden Vladimir Putin, cost Ukrainian lives, and, indeed, put the entire Ukrainian counteroffensive at risk of failure," the lawmakers explained.
The cluster munitions the U.S. will provide will have a dud rate below 2.35%, according to defense officials, which is much lower than the dud rate of the ones Russian forces are using, which officials said is between 30%-40%. The U.S. has "hundreds of thousands" of cluster munition rounds available to send immediately.
Not all lawmakers, however, were supportive of Biden's reversal.
Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Sara Jacobs (D-CA) introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that effectively prohibits the transfer of cluster munitions.
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"If the U.S. is going to be a leader on international human rights, we must not participate in human rights abuses. We can support the people of Ukraine in their freedom struggle, while also opposing violations of international law," Omar told Politico. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a former Army Ranger and Afghanistan veteran, previously told the outlet, “I spent formative years of my life in Afghanistan looking at kids seeing young Afghan children walking around without arms and legs decades after cluster munitions were used by the Russians in the ‘80s, and I don’t want to see that with Ukrainian children."
Part of the administration's thinking, according to officials, was that Ukraine would have to be de-mined anyway given Russia's use of cluster munitions. The U.S. has already provided Ukraine with $95 million to help with this effort.